Readers’ DIY suggestions take on 2 cleaning dilemmas

Over the past couple of weeks DIY Deconstructed has been posted to Channel3000.com, tweeted and posted on Facebook, and thanks to that exposure I have gotten some reader suggestions for ways to take on some of the issues I have written about. So this week I decided to test two of them and they worked a lot better than the Pinterest suggestions.

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The first viewer suggestion I got was how to unclog my bathtub drain after a mixture of baking soda and vinegar didn’t do anything. I got two suggestions and the first one was so good I didn’t have to try the second one.

A Facebook commenter said the best way to unclog a bathtub drain is to use a plunger. So I ran the water to let the tub fill up a little and then tried the plunger. I didn’t notice immediate results, but during my next shower I definitely noticed it. The standard inch of water that usually sat at the bottom of my tub after a shower was not there. Using a plunger to unclog a drain definitely works.

The second suggestion I got for unclogging my bathtub drain came from Jeri who said I should buy a “zipper” gadget at Menard's. They are basically long plastic, flexible sticks with plastic barbs along the side that you use to fish out whatever is clogging your drains. I found the zippers and they were only a couple dollars, but the plunger worked so well I decided to save them for another time.

The best viewer suggestion I’ve gotten so far was to use a pumice stone to get rid of the hard water stains in my toilet bowl. I tested a Pinterest post that said to use borax and vinegar, which didn’t do anything to the small ring of hard water stains in my toilet. But after a couple minutes of scraping with a pumice stone they were gone. My toilet bowl is now picture perfect!

Thank you for the DIY cleaning suggestions. I will keep reviewing what I see on Pinterest, but keep your tried-and-true suggestions coming!